July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Arizona’s Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa
County official who calls himself “America’s toughest
sheriff,” said at a civil rights trial that his department
doesn’t arrest people “because of the color of their skin.”

Arpaio, 80, testified yesterday in a federal court trial in
Phoenix in which he and his deputies are accused of racially
profiling Latinos. He was called as a witness by lawyers backed
by the American Civil Liberties Union who represent all Latinos
who have been stopped, detained, questioned or searched by
Arpaio’s deputies since January 2007. They are seeking a court
ruling that the sheriff’s so-called saturation patrols violated
the group’s constitutional rights.

Arpaio, dressed in a dark suit, said that prior to 2005, he
didn’t view illegal immigration as a “serious legal issue.”

Stanley Young, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, showed Arpaio a
sheriff’s department document dated in 2005 in which he had
written in the margin, “Is it unreasonable to ask our police to
question day laborers about their immigration status?”

Arpaio conceded that he wrote the question in the 2005
memo. He said he became more concerned about illegal immigration
in 2006, the year the department created a hotline in which
people could report suspected illegal aliens.

Traffic Laws

U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow in Phoenix will decide
the case without a jury. The class-action lawsuit includes
allegations similar to those made by the U.S. Justice Department
in a suit filed in May against Arpaio, his office and the
county. The U.S. accuses Arpaio of “intentionally and
systematically” discriminating against Latinos.

Arpaio has denied the allegations. His lawyers have said
the traffic stops conducted by the saturation patrols weren’t
racially motivated and were prompted by the plaintiffs’
violations of traffic laws.

Arpaio testified yesterday that he preferred the term crime
suppression patrols rather than saturation patrols.

“We do not arrest people because of the color of their
skin,” he said.

Young, who is with Covington & Burling LLP, asked the court
to play a recording of a portion of a 2007 press conference in
which Arpaio said “you go after them and you lock them up,”
referring to illegal aliens.

Office’s ‘Mission’

Arpaio testified that though enforcing illegal immigration
laws was part of the mission of the sheriff’s office, “we
enforce all the laws, not just illegal immigration.”

The sheriff serves Arizona’s biggest county by population,
with 3.8 million residents. His methods, including the patrols
in predominantly Latino areas in and around Phoenix, the state’s
largest city, have won him praise from groups seeking a
crackdown on illegal entrants to the U.S. and made him a target
of advocates for immigrants’ rights.

The case began in 2007, when Manuel de Jesus Ortega
Melendres, who was in the U.S. legally on a tourist visa, was
detained by sheriff’s deputies near a Cave Creek church where
day laborers often gathered.

A driver had picked up Melendres and two other men and was
driving away from the church when a deputy stopped the car for
speeding. The driver, who was white, wasn’t cited and was
allowed to leave, while the Hispanic men were held. Melendres
said in the lawsuit that a nine-hour detention that followed was
unlawful.

Singled Out

“Three Mexicans in a vehicle and one Anglo driver,” Louis
Moffa Jr., one of the lawyers who filed the original complaint
in 2007, said in a phone interview. “The Mexicans are arrested,
the driver goes on his way. We see in other traffic stops that
this was common.”

Melendres is one of the five named plaintiffs in the case.
The other four are U.S. citizens.

David Rodriguez, of Mesa, Arizona, testified July 19 that
in December 2007, while “four-wheeling” with his family on a
dirt road near Bartlett Dam, he inadvertently drove onto a
closed road, as did several other vehicles.

Rodriguez said he was cited by a deputy, while the other
drivers, all of whom Rodriguez described as white, weren’t
cited. Rodriguez said he believed he was cited because he is
Hispanic.

Timothy Casey, an attorney for Arpaio and the sheriff’s
office who is with Schmitt Schneck Smyth Casey & Even in
Phoenix, reminded Rodriguez during cross-examination that he had
testified that he’d driven more than 60,000 miles in Maricopa
County since being stopped and hadn’t once been pulled over by
sheriff’s deputies.

Opinion in Book

Young, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, asked Arpaio about a
passage in his 2008 book, “Joe’s Law: America’s Toughest
Sheriff Takes on Illegal Immigration, Drugs and Everything Else
That Threatens America.”

“You wrote, ‘all other immigrants, exclusive of those from
Mexico, held to certain hopes and truths,’” Young said to
Arpaio, asking him if he believes what he wrote.

Arpaio said that opinion is his co-author’s, Len Sherman,
and not his own. “The people who come from Mexico have the same
hopes as other people,” Arpaio testified.

Young read a 2007 statement to the press from Arpaio in
which he said that although some people consider Queen Creek,
Cave Creek and Wickenburg in the county to be “sanctuaries”
for large numbers of illegal day laborers who work in these
towns, he thought “the only sanctuary for illegal aliens is in
Mexico.”

Day Laborers

In response to Young’s questioning, Arpaio said he believed
“when people come into this country illegally and are deported
they should stay in that country and not keep coming back into
our country.”

When Young asked Arpaio about the likelihood that day
laborers in those towns hadn’t committed any crimes but were
nevertheless detained by sheriff’s deputies, Arpaio responded,
“We don’t go grabbing people off street corners unless there is
a crime committed,” adding that being in the country illegally
is a crime.

Young questioned Arpaio about the many letters the sheriff
had received from citizens complaining about neighbors the
writers assumed were illegal aliens.

“Sheriff, have you ever written back to the letter writer
and told them it is not a crime to be a minority?” Young asked.
“Have you said, ‘I’m not going to go after people based on
their race or ethnicity?’”

Arpaio responded, “I might have. I don’t remember.”

The plaintiffs are asking for a federally appointed monitor
to be put in place in the sheriff’s office to ensure racial
profiling doesn’t take place.

The case is Melendres v. Arpaio, 07-02513, U.S. District
Court, District of Arizona (Phoenix).